Abstract
An experiment was designed to study, under Solomon Islands conditions, the relative advantages of an imported pig feed and feeds of local origin. An imported compound pig grower diet resulted in slower growth (P=0.075) and poorer feed conversion ratio (P=0.001) than a similar diet compounded from locally available raw materials. The economic advantages of the local compound feed were marked (P<0.001) with cost per kg of liveweight gain being little over one third (S1$1.36 vs SI$3.11) of that observed with the imported feed. An alternative system employing a combination of a locally-produced protein concentrate and fresh cassava and coconut resulted in slightly poorer growth rates than the compound feeds but was still competitive in economic terms. The use of concentrate, cassava and coconut did, however, result in fatter carcasses in terms of back-fat measured at the mid-back (P=0.005) and the loin (P=0.007).
